Partners to Develop Methodologies for Ensuring Quality of Stem Cell Production

By BiotechDaily International staff writersPosted on 12 Nov 2012

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Biotech companies from the United States and Europe have recently announced an agreement to cooperate on the development of methodologies to enable the consistent production of large quantities of stem cells for research and clinical use.

The American company EMD Millipore (Billerica, MA, USA) offers a broad range of innovative products, services, and business relationships in research, development, and production of biotech and pharmaceutical drug therapies. EMD Millipore is the life science division of Merck KGaA, (Darmstadt, Germany).

The other partner to the agreement is Sistemic Ltd. (Glasgow, United Kingdom). Sistemic is a leading provider of microRNA-based problem-solving services and kit-based products. Their extensive suite of tools for the cell therapy community includes SistemQCT, which is used to characterize cells including stem cells with regard to cell identity, purity, potency, and safety as well as monitoring production quality control. In addition, the drug development market is served through a range of products which include SistemTOXT, SistemKBT, and SistemRNAT.

Under terms of the newly announced agreement the companies will jointly develop proprietary monitoring methodology utilizing Sistemic's microRNA marker detection capability to enable consistent growth of stem cells in EMD Millipore's Mobius CellReady platform. Markers developed in the course of this project may also be incorporated into commercially available kits for quality control of stem cells cultures.

"To advance the progress of stem cell products toward clinical use, it is critical to ensure the consistency and quality of large-scale culture systems," said Robert Shaw, commercial director of EMD Millipore's Stem Cell Initiative. "We are excited to be partnering with Sistemic, as the company's leading microRNA-based solutions will help us continue our efforts toward the commercialization of stem cell processing."

"We are delighted to enter this collaborative arrangement with EMD Millipore," said Jim Reid, CEO of Sistemic. "The fact that EMD Millipore has chosen Sistemic as its collaborative partner is yet another validation of our ground-breaking research and ability to develop systems for quality control of stem cells, and other mutually beneficial products and programs."